RFD: A modest proposal #2: unsupported

[Charles Wilson]

Christopher Faylor wrote:
[a reasonable position snipped]

> Pragmatically speaking, this is what will happen.  I'm not even going
> to add an IMO, since I think that all of this is a 100% certainty.

Sure, there will undoubtedly be problems.  But it (unsupported/) will 
also bring benefits.  It's a matter of cost vs. benefit -- which is a 
value judgement, and not something we can prove one way or the other 
without trying it out.

However, that's why we have benevolent dictators -- it's their job to 
make these calls.

(Open source is not, in general, a democracy.  Debian, the most 
community-driven of all large open source projects, elects its leader 
yearly -- but that leader once chosen has final say on a huge range of 
issues, at least until the next election.  And each person favored with 
the privilege of voting in that election has to have proven themselves 
in a number of ways.  Thus, even Debian is a dictatorship in the ancient 
Roman sense: a supreme leader with wide-ranging powers is chosen for a 
limited time by a representative or meritocratic body [the Senate|the 
Debian maintainers]  Yes, I'm glossing over a ton of stuff; here endeth 
the silly historical discourse...)

> So, count me as not liking this idea.  Sorry, Chuck.

Okay, fair enough.  I've mumbled about this a number of times over the 
past few years, but never went to the effort of formally proposing it. 
I've done so, the benevolent dictator has opposed it; I won't press the 
issue.

Thanks for your time.

Now, about that /opt tree...

--Chuck